http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/11/the-psychological-immune-system.php
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Coping with Rejection
Ever wonder how we recover from emotional setbacks? How come we can get over the break up, firing, spilt milk so (relatively) easy? We have what Gilbert et al have dubbed a psychological immune system which helps us bounce back from the downs in life. They performed an experiment in which subjects did a mock interview and were rejected for a job. Subjects knew that the interview was fake and that there was no job to get, and when being turned down they either faced one interviewer or three. Those that faced three were more saddened by the event but still recovered fairly quickly. People generally know when something will make them feel bad and they recover much quicker than they expect.
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When I read this I thought of someone breaking up with you out of the blue which makes it much more painful when you know that it's coming. This also made me think about popping balloons for some reason. When you pop a balloon yourself you know that it is coming so you can prepare for it but if someone else pops a balloon your body is not prepared and it is much more stressful when it pops.
ReplyDeleteYea I definitely agree with this post I feel when rejection is unexpected your psychological immune system is unable to prepare and you have a much harder time recovering. I also feel that there are individual differences in people's psychological immune systems, some people are much better able to bounce back from rejection whether they were prepared or not. I would think that people who are prone to depression have psychological immune systems that are not working as efficiently as other peoples. I would also like to add that I really like Scott's analogy with the balloon, that was cleaver.
ReplyDeleteYes this post is great because it does make you think wow I did get over that or I'm fine now after an unfortunate event. Your psychological immune response does really kick in and you honestly just get over things and cope with them.
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